Three fruit-pickers--women--were the first people I met near the
village (in Kent). They were clad in "rags and jags," and the face of
the eldest was in "jags" also. It was torn and scarred by time and
weather; wrinkled, and in a manner twisted like the fantastic turns of
a gnarled tree-trunk, hollow and decayed. Through these jags and
tearings of weather, wind, and work, the nakedness of the
countenance--the barren framework--was visible; the cheekbones like
knuckles, the chin of brown stoneware, the upper-lip smooth, and
without the short groove which should appear between lip and nostrils.
Black shadows dwelt in the hollows of the cheeks and temples, and there
was a blackness about the eyes. This blackness gathers in the faces of
the old who have been much exposed to the sun, the fibres of the skin
are scorched and half-charred, like a stick thrust in the fire, and
withdrawn before the flames seize it. Beside her were two young women,
both in the freshness of youth and health. Their faces glowed with a
golden-brown, and so great is the effect of colour that their plain
features were transfigured. The sunlight under their faces made them
beautiful. The summer light had been absorbed by the skin and now shone
forth from it again; as certain substances exposed to the day absorb
light and emit a phosphorescent gleam in the darkness of night, so the
sunlight had been drank up by the surface of the skin, and emanated
from it.
Hour after hour in the gardens and orchards they worked in the full
beams of the sun, gathering fruit for the London market, resting at
midday in the shade of the elms in the corner. Even then they were in
the sunshine--even in the shade, for the air carries it, or its
influence, as it carries the perfumes of flowers. The heated air
undulates over the field in waves which are visible at a distance; near
at hand they are not seen, but roll in endless ripples through the
shadows of the trees, bringing with them the actinic power of the sun.
Not actinic--alchemic--some intangible mysterious power which cannot be
supplied in any other form but the sun's rays. It reddens the cherry,
it gilds the apple, it colours the rose, it ripens the wheat, it
touches a woman's face with the golden-brown of ripe life--ripe as a
plum. There is no other hue so beautiful as this human sunshine tint.
The great painters knew it--Rubens, for instance; perhaps he saw it on
the faces of the women who gathered fruit or laboured at the harvest in
the Low Countries centuries since. He could never have seen it in a
city of these northern climes, that is certain. Nothing in nature that
I know, except the human face, ever attains this colour. Nothing like
it is ever seen in the sky, either at dawn or sunset; the dawn is often
golden, often scarlet, or purple and gold; the sunset crimson, flaming
bright, or delicately grey and scarlet; lovely colours all of them, but
not like this. Nor is there any flower comparable to it, nor any gem.
It is purely human, and it is only found on the human face which has
felt the sunshine continually. There must, too, I suppose, be a
disposition towards it, a peculiar and exceptional condition of the
fibres which build up the skin; for of the numbers who work out of
doors, very, very few possess it; they become brown, red, or tanned,
sometimes of a parchment hue--they do not get this colour.
These two women from the fruit gardens had the golden-brown in their
faces, and their plain features were transfigured. They were walking in
the dusty road; there was as background a high, dusty hawthorn hedge
which had lost the freshness of spring and was browned by the work of
caterpillars; they were in rags and jags, their shoes had split, and
their feet looked twice as wide in consequence. Their hands were black;
not grimy, but absolutely black, and neither hands nor necks ever knew
water, I am sure. There was not the least shape to their garments;
their dresses simply hung down in straight ungraceful lines; there was
no colour of ribbon or flower, to light up the dinginess. But they had
the golden-brown in their faces, and they were beautiful.
The feet, as they walked, were set firm on the ground, and the body
advanced with measured, deliberate, yet lazy and confident grace;
shoulders thrown back--square, but not over-square (as those who have
been drilled); hips swelling at the side in lines like the full bust,
though longer drawn; busts well filled and shapely, despite the rags
and jags and the washed-out gaudiness of the shawl. There was that in
their cheeks that all the wealth of London could not purchase--a superb
health in their carriage princesses could not obtain. It came, then,
from the air and sunlight, and still more, from some alchemy unknown to
the physician or the physiologist, some faculty exercised by the body,
happily endowed with a special power of extracting the utmost richness
and benefit from the rudest elements. Thrice blessed and fortunate,
beautiful golden-brown in their cheeks, superb health in their gait,
they walked as the immortals on earth.
As they passed they regarded me with bitter envy, jealousy, and hatred
written in their eyes; they cursed me in their hearts. I verily
believe--so unmistakably hostile were their glances--that had
opportunity been given, in the dead of night and far from help, they
would gladly have taken me unawares with some blow of stone or club,
and, having rendered me senseless, would have robbed me, and considered
it a righteous act. Not that there was any blood-thirstiness or
exceptional evil in their nature more than in that of the
thousand-and-one toilers that are met on the highway, but simply
because they worked--such hard work of hands and stooping backs, and I
was idle, for all they knew. Because they were going from one field of
labour to another field of labour, and I walked slowly and did no
visible work. My dress showed no stain, the weather had not battered
it; there was no rent, no rags and jags. At an hour when they were
merely changing one place of work for another place of work, to them it
appeared that I had found idleness indoors wearisome and had just come
forth to exchange it for another idleness. They saw no end to their
labour; they had worked from childhood, and could see no possible end
to labour until limbs failed or life closed. Why should they be like
this? Why should I do nothing? They were as good as I was, and they
hated me. Their indignant glances spoke it as plain as words, and far
more distinctly than I can write it. You cannot read it with such
feeling as I received their looks.
Beautiful golden-brown, superb health, what would I not give for these?
To be the thrice-blessed and chosen of nature, what inestimable
fortune! To be indifferent to any circumstances--to be quite
thoughtless as to draughts and chills, careless of heat, indifferent to
the character of dinners, able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable
of sleeping in the open under a rick, or some slight structure of a
hurdle, propped on a few sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and to
sleep sound as an oak, and wake strong as an oak in the morning-gods,
what a glorious life! I envied them; they fancied I looked askance at
their rags and jags. I envied them, and considered their health and hue
ideal. I envied them that unwearied step, that firm uprightness, and
measured yet lazy gait, but most of all the power which they possessed,
though they did not exercise it intentionally, of being always in the
sunlight, the air, and abroad upon the earth. If so they chose, and
without stress or strain, they could see the sunrise, they could be
with him as it were--unwearied and without distress--the livelong day;
they could stay on while the moon rose over the corn, and till the
silent stars at silent midnight shone in the cool summer night, and on
and on till the cock crew and the faint dawn appeared. The whole time
in the open air, resting at mid-day under the elms with the ripple of
heat flowing through the shadow; at midnight between the ripe corn and
the hawthorn hedge on the white wild camomile and the poppy pale in the
duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful heaven.
Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to be obtained from
constant presence with the sunlight and the stars. I thought of them
all day, and envied them (as they envied me), and in the evening I
found them again. It was growing dark, and the shadow took away
something of the coarseness of the group outside one of the village
"pothouses." Green foliage overhung them and the men with whom they
were drinking; the white pipes, the blue smoke, the flash of a match,
the red sign which had so often swung to and fro in the gales now still
in the summer eve, the rude seats and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound
about the edge with hay, the white dogs creeping from knee to knee,
some such touches gave an interest to the scene. But a quarrel had
begun; the men swore, but the women did worse. It is impossible to give
a hint of the language they used, especially the elder of the three
whose hollow face was blackened by time and exposure. The two
golden-brown girls were so heavily intoxicated they could but stagger
to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and one held a quart from which,
as she moved, she spilled the ale.